File Formats: What do they mean and Why Bother ?

raw, jpg, psd, tiff compressed, cropped and saved. Explained in one show

What comes out of the Camera

Picture taken with a Canon 5D 12.8MP camera

Comes out of the camera as a CR2 RAW file in 240 dpi and 18″x12″ in size at about 11MB

If I shot it in the camera in JPG (JPEG) it would come out of the camera at about 3-4MB

Now lets process the CRS RAW file in an editor (Photoshop) and save it as a JPG=4.52MB

If I was going to work on it in Photoshop and save the file as a PSD format for later added work=72.81MB

If I saved that same file NOT as a PSD but as a TIFF and included a layer or two=253MB

Common file format

Others can open it without Photoshop

Saved with layers, others can work on it

Ultimately if I wanted to use that file for offset printing, I would increase the resolution to 300 dpi and let the dimensions reduce slightly in doing so.

To Use on a website or Social Networking site

First you would want to reduce the resolution. Computer images don’t really get any better about 72 dpi so trying to send a picture in an e-mail at 300 dpi makes it appear huge on the screen and then crop and resize to a manageable size.

The results in terms of file size:

Remember: JPG OUT OF THE CAMERA=4MB @240dpi

The same JPG reduced to 72 dpi=414 KB

The same JPG compressed for WEB and other devices = 140 KB

The same JPG cropped and resized to 8×12 from 12×8 = 70KB

70 KB can be sent quickly and it will pop up in your website or social site album in a FLASH!